AFL-CIO’S ACUFF TAKES
ON UNION-BUSTER

Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas they were not, but the September 25 debate in Chicago about the Employee Free Choice Act, between AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff and union-busting attorney Michael Flaherty of the notorious Jackson Lewis firm, produced plenty of fireworks.

The debate, over the future of the Employee Free Choice Act, unexpectedly was brought home to the listeners in a personal way when a 14-year nurse at Chicago’s Resurrection Health Care hospital chain--where AFSCME has been trying to organize thousands of workers for years--described its bad working conditions, lousy patient care, and anti-union tactics.

She was promptly challenged, and virtually called a liar, by the hospital chain’s counsel, who also attended. That prompted Acuff to ask for data about labor law-breaking charges against Resurrection. The answer was 14 cases where the chain has already been convicted. And Resurrection is less notorious than other law-breakers.

Convictions and penalties, or lack of them, for labor law-breaking are a key section of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would help level the playing field between workers and bosses, and, Acuff said, help restore the declining middle class.

The bill would institute triple back pay for a worker fired illegally for backing unions, as opposed to the current penalty of back pay minus the worker’s interim earnings. And it would fine any labor law-breaker $20,000 per violation. It would also order the National Labor Relations Board to get court orders against repeat offenders.

Acuff and Flaherty spent their time debating whether the law would help workers or not, with Flaherty contending that it would have little practical impact because U.S. businesses would still shift jobs overseas to take advantage of working conditions elsewhere. Passage of the law, he contended, would make U.S. businesses less competitive, and accelerate the shift of jobs to Mexico and China.

If labor really wanted to help workers, the union-buster contended, it should organize workers abroad, to raise living standards there.

Acuff drew a direct line between the decline in union density in the U.S. and the decline and stagnation of workers’ incomes, along with the rise of abuses. The law, by aiding unions’ power to organize and bargain, would help reverse those conditions, he said.

He also cited investigations of union busters’ tactics, notably those of Flaherty’s firm, the leader in the anti-worker industry. Jackson Lewis tactics include advising employers to find trumped-up excuses to fire union backers, teaching them how to stall indefinitely, and telling firms “the NLRB doesn’t really care” about labor law-breaking.

“Ask Mr. Flaherty why Jackson Lewis in its literature refers to union-busting as ‘war,’” Acuff said. “Or their advice to employers that ‘lying to the NLRB is legal.’”

And when Flaherty claimed current labor law is strong enough to deter firms from breaking it, Acuff replied with a touch of sarcasm that “In 95% of cases, the only penalty is that the employer has to post a notice saying, ‘Oh, I won’t do it again.’”

But Acuff preferred the economic argument for the law--one that AFL-CIO polls show resonates with the wider population. The country can see their debate, which was taped: It is supposed to be posted on YouTube.

“The central economic facts are that while our productivity has increased by 75% since 1973, wages have stagnated or declined. And while CEO pay is now 411 times that of the average worker, 47 million people are without health care--as many as before Medicaid was enacted. These trends and facts directly track the assault on the freedom to form unions,” Acuff said.

Meanwhile, he pointed out that a recent study by the Center for Economic Policy Research noted that even in low-wage occupations, such as home health care and similar fields, “union workers earn 37% more than their non-union counterparts” and thus can join the middle class.

But fewer workers can do so “because the right to organize has been smashed,” Acuff stated. “There’s no way to fix” the lack of access to the middle class “without allowing workers to bargain their way into the middle class by joining a union.”

Flaherty concentrated on attacking the Employee Free Choice Act provision that would write card-check recognition of unions into labor law, affirming an option that has stood since at least 1962. But card-check exists only where the employer agrees to it.

The union-buster repeatedly said that section would nullify or eliminate National Labor Relations Board-run “free and democratic” union recognition elections--the line business and the Radical Right used to stop EFCA via a GOP Senate filibuster earlier this year.

Acuff had to always correct him on that section, adding: “Now the choice” for card-check “is up to the employer. Under EFCA, it’ll be up to the workers.” Board-run elections will still be in labor law and workers can call for them, Acuff noted.